She finished as runner-up on the Fox reality show, but endured more than her share of mind games: “They’d wake us up by clanging pots and pans together; they’d make us go through a dumpster at 7 a.m. to account for how much food we had wasted the night before. They basically kept us on edge at all time.” The 25-year-old newlywed even faced accusations she was “hooking up” with the host.

But after surviving, and even excelling, in that cauldron of humiliation and manipulation, Dalbeck now admits with a tinge of bitterness that “I got nothing, really.”